Camilo Mejia

Camillo Mejia says the abuse of Iraqis is “not the result of people waking up one morning as monsters, but it’s part of … the military culture. They train us that way.” He also says the brutality comes from being told that people are out to kill you. “You … remove the humanity from them to make it easier to oppress them, to brutalize them, to beat them, and in doing so, you remove the humanity from yourself because you cannot act as a human being and do all of these things.” He testified about abuse of prisoners to “soften them up” for interrogation. Mejia says some memories are so horrible the mind erases them. The first time he shot someone, Mejia remembers the events before and after, but the actual killing is a blank. In another incident, soldiers killed a young father in a car with his son sitting right next to him. Mejia can’t remember the expression on the boy’s face or even that he was a child—other people told him that later.